i was in a large Tesco supermarket today,and noticed they had some 00 grade flour, and also along with the other flour, they had the Allinsons branded 'very strong white flour'. now which do you think would be better for my pizza dough? the blurb on the side of the 00 grade flour was about it being much smoother etc. wasnt much info on the very strong flour packet.

any help would be gratefully appreciated. i'm wanting to make an american style pizza, a bit like the dominos kinda base if possible.

I don't know what "very strong white flour" is. I would assume it means High Gluten. The 00 flour might not work well for you in a home oven, so I would actually buy both flours and do a mix. Can't help with percentages since I really don't know the relevant data from the two flours. I am guessing that I would do an 80/20 mix with the 00/VSWF.

i bought the allinsons flour earlier today, so will be trying it out later. checked the supermarkets own brand strong white flour and that had an 11% protein ratio, compared to the allinsons 13.9 i think.

so if i make the dough this afternoon, should i leave it overnight at least?

would there be a different recipe if i wanted to make a pizza to have on the same day?

i also bought some unglazed tiles to cook the pizza on, so fingers crossed.

next time i go to my girlfreinds, they have a dominos about 10 min away, so will ask if they know.

oooooooooh, if i could recreate a dominos texas BBQ, i may be in food heaven lol

Paul

Edit:

Peter, i just read the dominos pdf from here in the Uk, and it mentions - Fresh Dough Ball (wheatflour, water, salt, sugar, vegetableoil, yeast, ascorbic acid, cornmeal), forgive my silly questions, but what is ascorbic acid, and do i need to add it?

The longer you let the dough retard in the fridge, the more flavor it will have. I don't know, however, if Domino's makes the dough for same day use or if they let it sit for a couple of days.

The plain term for ascorbic acid is Vitamin C. If I'm informed correctly, it's a dough conditioner. Pete knows probably a lot more about that subject and how it's properly used in pizza dough.

Quote

Ascorbic acid: Creates an acidic environment for the yeast which helps it work better. It also acts as a preservative & deters mold and bacterial growth. With just a touch of ascorbic acid, your Artisan breads, the yeast will work longer and faster. French bakers add it to their French bread, baguette or boule recipe.

If you can't find pure ascorbic acid crystals you can use Fruit Fresh (canning isle) or a crushed/powdered vitamin C tablet, but measure accordingly

Is this the Domino's UK pdf document you were referring to: http://www.dominos.uk.com/pdf/FoodGuide_Pizzasnz.pdf? If so, I noticed that all of the pizzas using the fresh dough seem to be light from a weight standpoint. I also noticed that the Domino's UK pdf document does not specify pizza sizes or the numbers of slices for its pizzas. Can you tell me what the typical pizza sizes are for the Domino's pizzas in the UK, in either centimeters or inches, and the corresponding numbers of slices per pizza? The Texas BBQ pizza you mentioned has a per-slice weight of 82.3 grams for a "large" pizza. If there are eight slices per pizza (the number used in the U.S.), then the total pizza weight would be 658.4 grams, or 23.22 ounces. An unbaked Texas BBQ pizza might weigh only a bit more. If we assume that 4 ounces of cheese and 4 ounces of BBQ sauce are used on the pizza (just a guess on my part), that would leave a dough ball weight of about 16 ounces. That might work to produce a thin 14" pizza.

The dough recipe you recited looks to be a fairly straightforward recipe. In the U.S., the law requires that the ingredients be listed by order of predominance by weight. Do you know if that also the law in the UK? If so, if you can get an idea as to a typical dough ball weight and a corresponding pizza size, you should be able to come up with a dough recipe that should produce a reasonable Domino's dough/pizza "clone". Unfortunately, I could not find anything from the brief research I conducted on Domino's/UK to provide or suggest an answer to that question.

As Mike noted, ascorbic acid is simply Vitamin C. It is commonly used as a dough conditioner to strengthen the dough. In the U.S., it is often used as a substitute for potassium bromate in flours. In the UK, and in the EU in general, potassium bromate in flours is outlawed. So, I suspect that the ascorbic acid is used as a substitute. It does not perform chemically the same way as potassium bromate and it isn't considered to be as effective, but that is the situation that prevails in the UK as regard bromating of flours. When used, the amount of ascorbic acid should be on the low side, maybe a pinch. Ascorbic acid is usually available in dry powder form or as tablets in your local pharmacy or health food store. You can grind a tablet if that is the only form available to you.

It is possible to make a dough that will last a few days under refrigeration or only several hours at room temperature (or possibly a combination of both). A dough that is to be cold fermented and used over a day or more will usually have a small amount of yeast and use cool/cold water in its preparation. A dough that is to be made and used within a few hours will usually have a fairly high amount of yeast and use warm water in its preparation. In the U.S., I believe that Domino's uses principally cold fermentation with the objective of having a dough that will last several days. However, I do not know if this is also the case in the UK for the stores that use fresh dough.

I did a little bit more searching and, according to http://www.ciao.co.uk/Domino_s_Pizza__Review_5312787, there are apparently three Domino's pizza sizes in the UK: 9.5" (small), 11.5" (medium) and 13.5" (large). I read elsewhere that the large pizza has 10 slices, not eight as in the U.S. So, on this basis, the Texas BBQ pizza would weigh 823 grams, or 29.03 ounces. An unbaked Texas BBQ pizza with only BBQ sauce and cheese on top of the crust might weigh a few ounces more. Now, all we need to know is how much a dough ball used to make a 13.5" pizza weighs. If the dough is made fresh in the UK Domino's near where your girlfriend's lives, they should know the answer to that question, and may even tell you. If you get the answer, please let me know.

I don't know what the practice is in the UK, but in the U.S., a large pizza with only sauce will quite often use more cheese than a pizza with another topping (e.g., pepperoni). Typically, it can be three cups of cheese for the former and two cups of cheese for the latter. In the U.S., Domino's uses diced mozzarella cheese from Leprino Foods. Leprino Foods has expanded into Europe by acquisition, so it is possible that they are supplying cheeses to the Domino's UK stores also. Unfortunately, Leprino cheeses are not sold at retail to individuals, only through foodservice companies.

For the BBQ sauce, you might write down the ingredients used to make Domino's BBQ sauce and see if there is anything close at the retail level or something that might easily be modified. According to Domino's UK nutrition information, their BBQ sauce is:

well, next time i go in, i'll be sure to do some investigating, and post any results i get. Also just remembered, a friend of mine in london has a cousin who runs a few dominos places, so i may just have to pay him a visit and try and find out some bits and pieces.

I'm going to try the recipe listed in my last post later on, with some BBQ sauce i got in costco last week, that isnt too strong, so fingers crossed. also bought some supermarket branded mozarella that was vacuum packed and aimed at pizza.

As you were posting, I came across this article: http://www.whichfranchise.com/franchisorPage.cfm?CompanyID=275. As you will note, it discusses the basics of Domino's UK pizza business, from which it appears that the dough balls are delivered to the stores fresh from one or more commissaries. This is essentially the business model that Papa John's uses in the U.S., and suggests that the dough balls are cold fermented for long periods of time to keep deliveries to stores to about twice a week (see, for example, the discussion of the Papa John's business model at Reply 1 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6758.msg58196.html#msg58196). I have discovered that the workers in the Papa John stores tend to know very little about the dough and other ingredients used to make the pizzas. So, you may discover that you will not be able to get much in the way of information on dough ball weights and the like.

The basic dough formulation you posted is member Randy's Papa John's clone dough formulation. The baker's percents represent my conversion of Randy's recipe to that format (at Reply 14 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,5721.msg54842.html#msg54842). Your numbers for a 12" pizza based on the referenced baker's percents look correct. However, you may want to use a bowl residue compensation factor in the expanded dough calculating tool, at http://www.pizzamaking.com/expanded_calculator.html, to compensate for minor dough losses during the preparation of the dough. I suggest a bowl residue compensation value of 1.5%. That will give you the following:

As you may have read, Randy's recipe is intended to be used to make a cold fermented dough. If you decide to use your version of that recipe to make the dough for later tonight, and you use the water at 120 degrees F (as recommended by Randy) and ferment the dough at room temperature, I think that you will find that the dough expands very rapidly and may even climb out of the bowl and try to attack you . Unless it is winter where you are and your kitchen is cold, the dough will be that aggressive. The maximum amount of IDY recommended for a several-hours (e.g., 4 hours) room temperature fermentation is about 1%. I recently made a same-day version of a Papa John's clone dough using a preferment and, for that dough, I used that maximum of 1% IDY (plus water at 65 degrees F). The pizza turned out fine and tasted fine, and while it looked a lot like an authentic PJ pizza, it did not taste exactly like an authentic PJ pizza. If you are interested, I showed a couple of photos of that pizza at Reply 35 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,6749.msg58335.html#msg58335.

When you bake your pizza, you will want to carefully watch the bottom of the pizza as it bakes on your preheated tiles. Randy's clone dough apparently can be baked on a preheated pizza stone (or tiles) but with all of the sugar and honey in the dough it is possible for the bottom of the pizza to brown too quickly, and even turn black because of caramelization of the sugar and honey. Sometimes that condition can result before the rest of the pizza, and particularly the top of the pizza, is finished baking. What I will sometimes do in such a case is remove the pizza from the stone to a higher rack position in the oven. That will expose the top of the pizza to more heat while not affecting the bottom of the pizza as much as it would if it were still on the tiles. If you are in the position of buying a pizza screen, I suggest that you do so, whether it is for a PJ clone pizza or a Domino's style pizza. Both companies use pizza screens in the U.S. in their air impingement conveyor ovens.

I look forward to hearing back from you on how the Allinson flour works out, given that it is almost as high in protein content as our domestic high-gluten flours. If you are in a position to post photos of your results, they would be welcome also.

i have just done a search on pizza screens, and i think we have something suitable in the kitchen, a very fine mesh sheet. would that do? should i coat it in something to stop the pizza sticking? i'll hopefully be trying the pizza tomorrow, i just read about docking, will i have to do that to the dough before adding sauce and toppings? would the screen be best in the middle, or bottom of the oven?

I personally wouldn't use a screen-like material that is not intended for baking. I would only use a commercial pizza screen. It should be seasoned before use (as discussed elsewhere on the forum) but that would be the extent of it.

There is no need to dock the dough. The pizza makers at Papa John's do it, either to make the dough open up better or to minimize bubbling in the oven, but I have found docking to be unnecessary for an American style dough. Some pizza operators dock the dough because it is cold when they use it (I saw this at a Papa John's store not too long ago) but if you let the dough warm up before shaping and stretching you should be in good shape.

I have used pizza screens at different oven rack positions but, for my oven (electric, non-convection), the lowermost oven rack position seems to work best. For others, the middle oven rack position seems to work better. Using anything higher than that will give you a lot of top heat but not enough for the bottoms of pizzas. To get the right bottom bake, the proximity of the pizzas to the lower heating coil or a stone or tiles is needed.

While I was in the supermarket today, I checked a few brands of BBQ sauce to see if any had a composition such as the one used in the UK by Domino's for its Texas BBQ pizza and listed in Reply 10 above, specifically:

I found three major U.S. brands, plus one house brand, that had a similar list of ingredients, including KC Masterpiece, Bulls-Eye and Kraft's--all basic varieties of the BBQ sauce (i.e., not honey or mesquite or other special version). One difference I noted is that the high fructose corn syrup was not the first ingredient in the list. The tomato paste/puree was first. Another brand used sugar in lieu of high fructose corn syrup and even proudly proclaimed on the label that no high fructose corn syrup was used. This change no doubt was to allay the concerns of consumers over what is perceived to be excessive use of high fructose corn syrup in food products. I noticed another product recently that said on the packaging that no high fructose corn syrup was used. I suspect we will see more of this sort of thing.

i checked the mesh thing and it is a screen of sorts, meant for cooking, and they do a round version, so will be ordering one this week.

as for the pizza, i left it in the fridge overnight, and let is come to room temp for about 3 hours. I shaped the dough into a rectangle, so it fitted the screen. I noticed it started to shrink slightly as i stretched it, but it did stay at the required shape after a few min.

Gave it a light rubbing of some BBQ sauce from costco, some sliced mushrooms, and some chicken breast i marinated in the BBQ sauce and grilled this morning, along the some shredded mozarella.

Cooked at 260C near the bottom of the oven for about 8 or 9 min, and i must say, i was impressed! lol

Did take a pic, although i need to download it off the phone in the morning. Lets just say there's one slice left, so it got a big thumbs up from family and girlfriend, who i think were expecting a cardboard pizza of sorts lol

Now i just need to get a few more packs of the flour to continue my experimentation lol

Tomorrow I'm gonna be trying your clone recipe peter, and make it later this week.

You must know a thing....the "power" of a flour depends from protein, or gluten....the gluten make a sort of woven( in italian is tessuto, or a sort of net) that catch the fermentation gasses into it.

More strong is the flour, more time you need to wait for work the dough.....with a weak flour the yeast is more faster, because the "gluten-net" (forgive me but my english is horrible ) is weaker, but a very strong flour make you wait even for 12/16 hours....